Syrian “rebels” are firing chemical weapons.

SYRIA UPDATE: Chemical Weapons Used For False Flag Operations.

FULL: President Obama Decides US to Take Military Action on Syria – Statement 8/31/2013

Syria Rebels testing Tekkim chemicals to use as chem weapons

Published on Dec 5, 2012

This video appeared on YouTube yesterday showing what appears to be a rebel group in Syria testing a chemical combination to be used as a chemical weapon (most likely nerve agents as judged by the reaction of lab rabbits in the video) and threatening to use this chem weapon against civilians in Syria on a sectarian basis.

50. The 3 Coming False Flag Attacks

What really happened at Tonkin Gulf?

The false flag Gulf of Tonkin Incident Vietnam

Gulf of Tonkin: The Record Set Straight

17 False Flag Operations in AMERICA done by The FBI

Panetta: No new signs Syria prepping WMD

CHEMICAL WEAPONS: US Armed FSA Syrian Rebels Use SARIN NERVE GAS!

Published on May 11, 2013

CHEMICAL WEAPONS: US Armed FSA Syrian Rebels Use SARIN NERVE GAS!

The US Defense Secretary says the old order in the Middle East is disappearing, although it’s still not clear what will replace it. Chuck Hagel stressed the conflict in Syria is becoming increasingly more sectarian and extremist, with the country’s collapse now more real than ever. But, while some US lawmakers make fresh calls for military intervention, Washington’s taken a backseat.

GENEVA — U.N. human rights investigators have gathered testimony from casualties of Syria’s civil war and medical staff indicating that rebel forces have used the nerve agent sarin, one of the lead investigators said on Sunday.

The United Nations independent commission of inquiry on Syria has not yet seen evidence of government forces having used chemical weapons, which are banned under international law, said commission member Carla Del Ponte.

“Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals and, according to their report of last week which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated,” Del Ponte said in an interview with Swiss-Italian television.

“This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities,” she added.

Del Ponte, a former Swiss attorney-general who also served as prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, gave no details as to when or where sarin may have been used.

The Geneva-based inquiry into war crimes and other human rights violations is separate from an investigation of the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria instigated by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, which has since stalled.

President Bashar al-Assad’s government and the rebels accuse each another of carrying out three chemical weapon attacks, one near Aleppo and another near Damascus, both in March, and another in Homs in December.

The civil war began with anti-government protests in March 2011. The conflict has now claimed an estimated 70,000 lives and forced 1.2 million Syrian refugees to flee.

The United States has said it has “varying degrees of confidence” that sarin has been used by Syria’s government on its people.

President Barack Obama last year declared that the use or deployment of chemical weapons by Assad would cross a “red line”.

U.S. officials are increasingly worried that Syria’s weapons of mass destruction could fall into the hands of Islamist extremists, rogue generals or other uncontrollable factions.

Last week, fighters from a group that the Obama administration has branded aterrorist organization were among rebels who seized the Sheik Suleiman military base near Aleppo, where research on chemical weapons had been conducted. Rebels are also closing in on another base near Aleppo, known as Safirah, which has served as a major production center for such munitions, according to U.S. officials and analysts.

***

A former Syrian general who once led the army’s chemical weapons training program said that the main storage sites for mustard gas and nerve agents are supposed to be guarded by thousands of Syrian troops but that they would be easily overrun.

The sites are not secure, retired Maj. Gen. Adnan Silou, who defected to the opposition in June, said in an interview near Turkey’s border with Syria. “Probablyanyone from the Free Syrian Army or any Islamic extremist group could take them over,” he said.

***

As the Syrian opposition steadily makes territorial gains, U.S. officials and analysts said the odds are increasing that insurgents will seize control of a chemical weapons site or that Syrian troops guarding the installations will simply abandon their posts.

“It’s almost inevitable,” [Michael Eisenstadt, a retired Army officer who directs the military and security studies program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy] said. “It may have already happened, for what we know.”

***

Last week, the Syrian Foreign Ministry said the al-Nusra Front — an anti-Assad group that has been labeled a terrorist organization by the United States and is also known as Jabhat al-Nusra — had seized a chlorine factory near the town of Safirah, east of Aleppo. “Terrorist groups may resort to using chemical weapons against the Syrian people,” the ministry cautioned.

Questions remaining about who actually controls some of Syria’s chemical weapons stores ….

A report by the Office of the Director for National Intelligence outlining that evidence against Syria includes a few key caveats — including acknowledging that the U.S. intelligence community no longer has the certainty it did six months ago of where the regime’s chemical weapons are stored ….

U.S. and allied spies have lost track of who controls some of the country’s chemical weapons supplies, according to the two intelligence officials and two other U.S. officials.

***

U.S. analysts … are also not certain that when they saw what looked like Assad’s forces moving chemical supplies, those forces were able to remove everything before rebels took over an area where weapons had been stored.

U.S. intelligence officials are not so certain that the suspected chemical attack was carried out on Assad’s orders, or even completely sure it was carried out by government forces, the officials said.

***

Another possibility that officials would hope to rule out: that stocks had fallen out of the government’s control and were deployed by rebels in a callous and calculated attempt to draw the West into the war.

In August, Fox News interviewed Rep. Mike Rogers, R.-Mich., who said he saw a chemical weapon stockpile in the country during a 2004 trip. At the time, he said the U.S. was concerned about “thousands of pounds of very active mustard gas.”

Spread across the desert here off the Sirte-Waddan road sits one of the biggest threats to Western hopes for Libya: a massive, unguarded weapons depot that is being pillaged daily by anti-Gadhafi military units, hired work crews and any enterprising individual who has the right vehicle and chooses to make the trip.

In one of dozens of warehouses the size of a single-family home, Soviet-era guided missiles remain wrapped inside crates stacked to the 15-foot ceiling. In another, dusted with sand, are dozens of sealed cases labeled “warhead.” Artillery rounds designed to carry chemical weapons are stashed in the back of another. Rockets, antitank grenades and projectiles of all calibers are piled so high they defy counting….

Convoys of armed groups from all over Libya have made the trek here and piled looted weapons into trailer trucks, dump trucks, buses and even empty meat trucks….

In the desert near Sirte, there was no security for dozens of small armories at the complex, where weapons are removed every day by opposition fighters, paid contractors and others. In one structure, the word “warhead” was stamped on dozens of sealed containers. At another depot, empty chemical agent munitions were found.

There is at present no viable Libyan government-sanctioned force with the capacity to keep freelancer fighters from taking what they please from the warehouses, according to the Journal.

***

U.S. Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) visited the Libyan capital, where he said gaining control over the country’s armories was a “very big topic.”

“We have a game plan to secure the weapon caches, particularly biological and chemical weapons,” McCain said.

Al Qaeda terrorists in North Africa could be in possession of chemical weapons, a leading Spanish intelligence officer said on Monday.

The head of National Police counter-terrorist intelligence, Commissioner-General Enrique Baron, told a strategic security conference in Barcelona that it was believed that the self-styled Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb – AQMI – could have acquired such arms in Libya or elsewhere during the Arab Spring last year.

***

Commissioner Baron told his audience: “The Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb has acquired and used very powerful conventional arms and probably also has non-conventional arms, basically chemical, as a result of the loss of control of arsenals.”

The most likely place where this could have happened was in Libya during the uprising which overthrew the Gaddafi regime, said Commissioner Baron.

In his position as the head of Spanish National Police intelligence the Commissioner-General works closely with MI6, the CIA and other Western European intelligence services.

Remember, the head of the Libyan rebels admitted that the rebels were largely Al Qaeda. CNN, theTelegraph, the Washington Times, and many other mainstream sources confirm that Al Qaeda terrorists from Libya have since flooded into Syria to fight the Assad regime … bringing their arms with them. And the post-Gaddafi Libyan government is also itself a top funder and arms supplier of the Syrian opposition. (CNN notes that the CIA may have had a hand in this operation.)

The Turkish General Directorate of Security … seized 2 kg of sarin gas in the city of Adana in the early hours of yesterday morning. The chemical weapons were in the possession of Al Nusra terrorists believed to have been heading for Syria.

Russia Claims Syrian Rebels Used Chemical Weapons

UNITED NATIONS — Russia’s U.N. ambassador said Tuesday that Russian experts determined that Syrian rebels made sarin nerve gas and used it in a deadly chemical weapon attack outside Aleppo in March.

Ambassador Vitaly Churkin blamed opposition fighters for the March 19 attack in the government-controlled Aleppo suburb of Khan al-Assal, which he said killed 26 people, including 16 military personnel, and injured 86 others.

The rebels have blamed the government for the attack. The U.S. Britain and France have said they have seen no evidence to indicate that the opposition has acquired or used chemical weapons.

In Washington, White House spokesman Jay Carney said “We have yet to see any evidence that backs up the assertion that anybody besides the Syrian government has had the ability to use chemical weapons or has used chemical weapons.”

Churkin told reporters after delivering an 80-page report to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that the Assad regime asked Russia, its closest ally, to investigate the attack after a U.N. team of chemical weapons experts was unable to enter the country in a dispute over the probe’s scope.

Acting U.S. Ambassador Rosemary DiCarlo said Syrian President Bashar Assad should now allow U.N. chemical weapons experts into the country to conduct an investigation of the Khan al-Assal incident as well as other allegations of chemical weapons use by the U.S., U.K., and France.

The samples taken from the impact site of the gas-laden projectile were analyzed at a Russian laboratory certified by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Churkin said.

He said the analysis showed that the unguided Basha’ir-3 rocket that hit Khan al-Assal was not a military-standard chemical weapon.

Churkin said the results indicate it “was not industrially manufactured and was filled with sarin.” He said the samples indicated the sarin and the projectile were produced in makeshift “cottage industry” conditions, and the projectile “is not a standard one for chemical use.”

The absence of chemical stabilizers, which are needed for long-term storage and later use, indicated its “possibly recent production,” Churkin said.

“Therefore, there is every reason to believe that it was the armed opposition fighters who used the chemical weapons in Khan al-Assal,” Churkin said.

“According to information at our disposal,” he added, “the production of `Basha’ir 3′ unguided projectiles was started in February 2013 by the so-called `Basha’ir al-Nasr’ brigade affiliated with the Free Syrian Army.”

On Monday, Syria invited Ake Sellstrom, head of the U.N. fact-finding mission on allegations of chemical weapons use in Syria, and U.N. disarmament chief Angela Kane to visit Damascus for foreign-minister level talks on conducting a probe of just the Khan al-Assal attack.

The Russian ambassador strongly backed the idea, calling it “a promising process” that hopefully will lead to an investigation.

Britain, France and the United States have provided the secretary-general with information on other alleged chemical weapons attacks in Syria. Ban has repeatedly said he wants a broader investigation than just Khan al-Assal.

“We support a thorough investigation of all credible allegations,” Churkin said, but added that Russian experts “were not impressed at all” by the material provided to them by the U.K., U.S. and France.

At the White House, Carney said that Syria’s President “Bashar al-Assad called for a U.N. investigation into the use of chemical weapons and then he blocked the ability of the United Nations to conduct that investigation. The way to answer this question is to allow the United Nations to investigate.”

President Barack Obama’s administration says it has “high confidence” that Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces have killed up to 150 people with sarin gas.

In a letter to the secretary-general on June 14, then-U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said the U.S. had determined that sarin was used in the March 19 attack on Khan al-Assal and also in an April 13 attack on the Aleppo neighborhood of Shaykh Maqsud. She said unspecified chemicals, possibly including chemical warfare agents, were used May 14 in an attack on Qasr Abu Samrah and in a May 23 attack on Adra.

The use of a chemical weapon crossed Obama’s “red line” for escalating U.S. involvement in the conflict and prompted the decision to send arms and ammunition to the opposition, not just humanitarian aid and non-lethal material like armored vests and night goggles.

Churkin said Russia plans to provide the 80-page report to the U.S., U.K. and France, and “I hope they find it persuasive.” But he said it will not be made public.

U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky had no immediate comment on the issue, noting that the Russian ambassador had delivered the “weighty and quite technical” report only minutes earlier. He said the Department of Disarmament Affairs would study it and provide guidance to the secretary-general.

Is It Possible The Syrian Rebels (Not Assad) Used Chemical Weapons?

by EYDER PERALTA

August 27, 2013

As it lays the groundwork for a potential military strike against Syria, the Obama administration says it is all but certain that President Bashar Assad used chemical weapons against his own people last week.

Secretary of State John Kerry made the case Monday. “We know that the Syrian regime maintains custody of these chemical weapons,” Kerry said. “We know that the Syrian regime has the capacity to do this with rockets. We know that the regime has been determined to clear the opposition from those very places where the attacks took place. And with our own eyes, we have all of us become witnesses.” On Tuesday, White House spokesman Jay Carney reiterated the point, saying that “anyone who approaches this logically” would conclude that Assad is responsible.

So, is it possible the United States and its allies are wrong? Is it possible that it was the rebels, or another group within Syria, that launched the attack near Damascus that reportedly left hundreds dead and thousands more injured?

“I have been asking myself the same question ever since it happened, because it was difficult to find a rationale [for an Assad-led attack],” says Gwyn Winfield, the editorial director of CBRNe World, a magazine that covers biological and chemical weapons for the industry.

“[A rebel attack] is feasible, but not particularly likely,” said Winfield.

What Winfield means is that this seems like a lose-lose situation for Assad. A chemical attack by the regime would seem to bolster the opposition, because it could mean an international intervention. As for the rebels, there are huge questions about whether they could have pulled off such an attack.

Back in 2002, research conducted by George Lopez, a professor of peace studies at the University of Notre Dame, cast doubt on the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In this situation, Lopez rejects the notion that it was the Syrian rebels who used chemical weapons.

Lopez and Winfield agree that the rebels may have the motivation to use chemical weapons.

“This anarchic, killing stalemate” could motivate anyone, Winfield says, but such a scenario just doesn’t make sense.

For one thing, the alleged chemical attack happened in the Ghouta region of Damascus. It is controlled by the rebels, and civilians in the area sympathize with the rebels.

“The smart thing [for the rebels] would be for you to aim for barracks and maime/kill a significant few hundred soldiers as the best chance for reverberations that played to your advantage,” said Lopez. “This was not done.”

It seems clear, Lopez says,”that some armed unit foot soldiers were sent in by Assad some time after the attack in limited numbers. That achieved the desired effect of making the case that since Assad soldiers were hit, the weapons came from the ‘terrorists;’ but these were exemplars, too few to make a strategic difference for the rebels.”

In making the case against Assad, the U.S. has said it is his forces who have the capabilities to launch such an attack and that the rebels do not.

An August 20 report by the Congressional Research Service (pdf) says that Syria has had a vast stockpile of chemical weapons since the early 1980s and perhaps as far back as 1973. Not only that, but the military was trained by the Soviets and possesses the delivery methods — scud missiles and batteries of rocket launchers — that could be used to “rapidly achieve lethal doses of non-persistent agents in a concentrated area.”

The report goes on to explain that U.S. officials “have unanimously stated that the weapons stockpiles are secure.”

Winfield maintains that the Free Syrian Army has the experience and perhaps even the launching systems to perpetrate such an attack. But that would mean that U.S. officials, and Assad himself, were wrong when they said the chemical stockpiles were secure.

“If [the rebels] have overrun an arms dump which had some of the agent, if a defector brought a limited amount with him, then it would explain why some of the signs and symptoms showed less toxicity than we expected,” Winfield said. “That is a lot of ‘ifs,’ though.”

Lopez concurs: “Western intelligence has been standing on its head to monitor all intel about those groups hostile to the West and what they have in their weapons access and supply. The amount of gas agents seemingly used was way beyond what a clandestine group could mix and develop without detection. And it is unclear they would have the expertise to mix the agents.

“Is it possible that a rebel group overran a storage facility of the government and captured some shells that were ready to be activated and then did so?” Lopez says. “Yes, but it would have had to have been a very large seizure preceded by a big battle between Assad top teams and rebels. It could not have happened without inside/outside knowledge.”

All of that said, note that the U.S. has qualified every statement it has made about the situation.Kerry said it is “undeniable” that chemical weapons had been used in Syria and he set out a case against Assad without directly blaming the regime for the attack.

During his daily press briefing Tuesday, Carney said: “There is also very little doubt, and should be no doubt for anyone who approaches this logically, that the Syrian regime is responsible for the use of chemical weapons on August 21st outside of Damascus.”

Jean Pascal Zanders, who worked for the European Union Institute for Security Studies from 2008 to 2013 and concentrated on the non-proliferation of chemical weapons says until the U.N. investigative team presents its report, “we need to keep our minds open that the events of last Wednesday could in whole or partially have alternative explanations.”

“In fact, we – the public – know very little beyond the observation of outward symptoms of asphyxiation and possible exposure to neurotoxicants, despite the mass of images and film footage,” Zanders added. “For the West’s credibility, I think that governments should await the results of the U.N. investigation.”

Evidence: Syrian Rebels used Chemical Weapons (not Assad)

Recent news of a chemical weapons attack in Syria smacks of desperation. The question comes down to who is most desperate right now, the Assad regime or the Muslim Brotherhood rebels? Consider that since June, Assad’s forces have been winning. According to a CBS News report from last month, victories for the rebels had become “increasingly rare” and that the Muslim Brotherhood-backed opposition fighters were sustaining “some of their heaviest losses” near Damascus.

Saudi Chemicals in hands of Syrian Rebels

The New York Times echoed this sentiment, even saying that before gaining the upper hand, concerns were that Assad would use chemical weapons; he did not.

In fact, even before Assad’s forces gained the momentum, a UN official reportedly found evidence of rebels using chemical weapons but no evidence Assad’s regime did. This, from a Washington Times article by Shaun Waterman dated May 6, 2013:

Testimony from victims strongly suggests it was the rebels, not the Syrian government, that used Sarin nerve gas during a recent incident in the revolution-wracked nation, a senior U.N. diplomat said Monday.

Carla del Ponte, a member of the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, told Swiss TV there were “strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof,” that rebels seeking to oust Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad had used the nerve agent.

But she said her panel had not yet seen any evidence of Syrian government forces using chemical weapons, according to the BBC, but she added that more investigation was needed. {emphasis ours}

Today, while the rebels are more desperate than they were at the time of that article, evidence of rebels using chemical weapons is available; evidence Assad’s regime has used them is not.

That doesn’t square with a video uploaded on August 23, 2013, in which Free Syrian operatives threatened to launch chemical weapons:

A day later, on August 24th, a video was uploaded and featured on facebook that purports to show Syrian rebels loading what very well may be a rocket armed with some sort of chemical agent. The tip of the rocket is armed with a light blue tank or canister that very well contains a nerve agent. At the end of this video, two separate launches of these rockets can be seen:

This video from a Syrian TV news report claims to show chemicals (some of labels on these chemicals are in English) and weapons seized by the Syrian government in the rebel stronghold of Jobar. Note at the :10 mark a label that reads:

“Saudi Factory for Chlorine and Alkalies”

In this video, two Syrian rebels (Muslim Brotherhood gang) can be heard coordinating an attack on a nearby building. As smoke billows a short distance from the building, a rebel on the ground can be heard directing someone – presumably at the source of the launch – to change his direction. At that point, the rebel from the launch point can be heard talking about using sarin gas next:

In this video of a Russia Today news report originally broadcast on or before June 16, 2013, testimony from a United Nations panel is reported to demonstrate that rebel groups – not the Assad regime – was responsible for the use of chemical weapons in general, Sarin gas in particular, which backs up the claims in the previous video. Those who attempt to discredit the report below because it is from Russia Today should have difficulty doing so when factoring in rebels above talking about using sarin gas:

UN Panel implicates Syrian Rebels in Chemical weapons attacks

It’s significant to consider that the rebels were reportedly using chemical weapons at a time when Assad was more desperate than he is now. Again, why would Assad use chemical weapons now and not then? Who is more desperate at this point in the conflict?

The answer is, the Muslim Brotherhood rebels, who have no problem killing themselves (or their own) if the cause of Islam is moved forward.

Even CNN International, which has typically been quick to report favorably for the Muslim Brotherhood rebels, is hedging its bets lately, when it comes to who is responsible for the attack. Here is a video report from Frederik Pleitgen in which he leaves the possibility open that the rebels may have perpetrated or staged the attack:

Back in March, we chronicled evidence of chemical weapons being used by the Syrian rebels. Unfortunately, since google terminated Theodore’s YouTube account, most of the videos in that post have been deleted and have been more than a little difficult to find.

Running concurrent with the tide that turned in Assad’s favor a few months ago was another defeat for the Muslim Brotherhood – in Egypt. That defeat has been taking place ever since Mohammed Mursi was ousted on July 3rd. So why would Assad use chemical weapons now and not months ago, when his situation was much more precarious?

As the Associated Press was reporting that the U.S. is moving ships closer to Syria in response to the alleged chemical weapons attack, Reuters reported that Assad’s army found chemical weapons in tunnels that had been used by the rebels, according to Syrian state television.

Oxford University historian Mark Almond granted Russia Today an interview and explained both why western nations are so willing to blame Assad and why rebels would have a motive to murder their own people. In response to a question about why the U.S., the U.K., and France appear so eager to blame Assad, Almond said:

“Western governments… want to say ‘Gotcha’. They have been demanding the fall of Assad for more than two-and-a-half years now and it has become increasingly frustrating that his regime has shown much more resilience than they had expected, despite the resources that they and the Gulf Kingdoms have thrown into the war on the other side.

It is also like a distraction from the embarrassment of Egypt, where we see the European and the US governments basically using weasel words to avoid any kind of condemnation of a massacre in the streets of Cairo. So there are both the specifics of Syria and the context of what is going on elsewhere in the Arab world, especially in Egypt.”

Almond gives a very interesting answer to the question about why the rebels would intentionally gas their own people:

“We do have some very radical groups who would no doubt say, as they have when they have been challenged about using suicide bombers, killing innocent people, that God will recognize his own when the dead die, that he will save for heaven the justified victims and just send to hell the wicked supporters of Assad. So it is not impossible that somebody has staged this.

Consider that a man many of the Syrian rebels show the utmost of reverence for is the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual leader, Yusuf Al-Qaradawi. When writing about a Muslim tactic known asMuruna, Qaradawi expressed when it is acceptable for Muslims to kill fellow Muslims:

“…killing Muslims whom the unbelievers use as shields… leaving these unbelievers is a danger to the Muslims, so it is permissible to kill these unbelievers even if Muslims are killed with them in the process.” – The Case FOR Islamophobia, p. 56

Of course, if the rebels are desperate enough, Muruna could sanction the murder of their own people if it meant bearing false witness and a blood libel that would engage external forces that want Assad removed. As things stand today, the rebels are more desperate than is the Assad regime.

Specific examples include the staged death of twelve year-old Muhammad Al-Dura by Palestinians. Whether the child was used as a prop in a Palestinian blood-libel or was actually killed, he was clearly put in danger by Palestinians who shot at him as the news cameras rolled for a false report that aired on France 2. They wanted to blame the Israelis.

Earlier this month in Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood supporters were caught behaving as victims of oppression at the hands of the military. They might have gotten away with it if nothing but still shots were taken. Unfortunately for these miscreants, video was recorded that revealed a staged, mass display of despicable behavior.

Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood rebels would never get away with launching chemical weapons and taking credit for it. They’d have to do so while blaming Assad. It’s straight out of the Nazi playbook and a violation of two major commandments – Thou shalt not murder and thou shalt not bear false witness. However, the Muslim Brotherhood, as usual, provides more evil spin. It bears false witness while committing murder in order to push an agenda.

Lying, bearing false witness, blood libel, and murder.

Yeah, that smells like the Brotherhood.

**UPDATE at 8:40am EST on August 31, 2013**
Associated Press reporter Dale Gavlak reports in MintPress news that firsthand accounts indicate that the Chemical weapons attack was the result of the rebels’ mishandling of them. According to Gavlak, the weapons came from Saudi Arabia’s Prince Bandar bin Sultan and were given to rebels who did not know what the weapons were or how to store them, nor were they trained how to use them. If these accounts are correct, the Obama administration – along with more than a handful of Republican congressmen – may be complicit in a blood libel.

He and Senator Lindsey Graham, a fellow Republican foreign policy hawk, emerged from the Oval Office meeting on Monday cautiously optimistic that Mr Obama would step up support for the rebels.

“There seems to be emerging from this administration a pretty solid plan to upgrade the opposition,” Mr Graham said.

He added that he hoped the opposition would be given “a chance to speak directly to the American people” to counter US fears that they were dominated by al-Qaeda sympathisers.

“They’re not trying to replace one dictator, Assad, who has been brutal… to only have al-Qaeda run Syria,” Mr Graham said.

The US announced in June, following the first allegations the Assad regime had used chemical weapons, that it would send light arms to the rebels but refused to provide anti-aircraft missiles and other heavy weapons.

American concerns were born partly out of the experience of Afghanistan in the 1980s, when CIA weapons given to the anti-Russian mujahideen were later used by the Taliban.